Subscribe to Layla's website via Email

Hello

Welcome to my brand new website! Though I’ve had several blogs before, having my very own website is a first for me, and am super excited!

I am extremely grateful to Tania Arpa, who’s responsible for how awesome my website looks. Love you, dah-ling! <3 If you like how my site looks, head on over to taniaarpa.com and let her work her magic for you.

A month ago, I released my first ever book, Before I Lose My Nerve, a small volume of poetry about love, loss, courage, and hope. It’s been an amazing experience, being an author for the very first time. I’ve been writing for most my life, and worked as a writer throughout most of my professional career. It’s mostly been TV scripts, PR articles, TV commercials, corporate videos, online articles, even a film—anything and everything that’s dictated by the job or the project I’m in.

About 5 or 6 years ago, Mina V. Esguerra, who’s a very good friend of mine, asked me to edit her book. She’d had a couple of romance novels out by then and was working on a new one, a three-part series titled Interim Goddess of Love. I’d never edited professionally before that but she seemed to think I could do it. I did, but really, editing her work was (and still is) super easy because even at that early stage, she has mastered her genre and pretty soon, was teaching other Filipino authors that writing a romance novel in English and publishing it can be done in a few simple steps and in less time than people think it normally should. That class was dubbed #romanceclass and from an initial list of five titles, the catalogue has grown to over a hundred different titles (with more being written every day)! You can check out the catalogue over at romanceclassbooks.com.

One of the steps in #romanceclass is hiring an editor to have your manuscript reviewed and commented on so that it can be improved. Mina told some of the authors who her editor is and they asked me to edit their work and since then, the requests kept coming and, thankfully, show no signs of stopping. I’ve been asked several times when my own work is coming out.

The answer, apparently, was April 29, when my book went live on Amazon. The response from the very loving and supportive #romanceclass community has been overwhelming it brought me to tears. They tweeted, re-tweeted, posted and re-posted about my book on social media. I’d have to do a full post on making the book soon, so watch out for that. I brought a few print copies of the book to #AprilFeelsDay2017 on April 30 and in a few hours, I couldn’t find it on the shelf. It was INSANE. I honestly didn’t even think people would pay any attention to my book, there were just so many great ones to choose from, and by authors who’re well-loved and well-known. I’d do a full post on my first #romanceclass event as an author soon, too.

If you’d like to order print copies of my book, you can find the order form here.

Post navigation

Search

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.